Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Fun with telemarketers

“Hello, this is – “

“IS THAT YOU?” (sounding excited). “I’ve been waiting so long for
your call. I got the body chopped up and stuffed in the bag like you
told me – now what?”

Wait for the long silence.

Then have fun with them. Try to convince them they need to help you
hide this body. Give suggestions (“There’s a swamp nearby,” you can say
kinda thoughtfully.”). When things get too serious – or they are
suggesting you call the cops, tell them: “But it’s one of THEM! He told
me to do it.” Make up some story about blackmail from a county
commissioner; or that you did a ‘hired hit’ – not as a professional –
and now you got this body. In a bag.

Or do what my mom did:

“OH MY GOD!” She cried. “HOW CAN YOU CALL ME AT A TIME LIKE THIS! MY HUSBAND JUST DIED! HE’S LAYING ON THE FLOOR RIGHT THERE!
THE AMBULANCE HASN’T EVEN COME!” And then go into a screaming crying
raging fit, trying to elicit as much sympathy – and instill as much
guilt for calling her at this time – as humanly possible.

And then you can take it two ways.
1) Ask them if they are selling a life insurance policy. You need one
now that your husband died. And yeah – you wanna take it out on him.
(You can even play the ‘blame game’ – claim you were doing CPR and
stopped to take the call, thinking it was the ambulance – and now HE’S
DEAD! (cry).
2) Suddenly stop, and in a casual way, become interested in buying their product – whatever it is they’re selling.

and then there’s this one:

“shhhh!” you say quietly the moment you realize who it is. “There’s a
man/stranger in my house. I think he wants to kill me.” And then go on
to tell the telemarketer she/he needs to call 911 – and no, you won’t
hang up, you want someone to talk to while this is going on – and
occasionally stop to say ‘hush!’ while pretending to listen around.
Then somewhere along the line (before things get TOO serious) – SHRIEK!
(real loud, right into the phone) – scream, bang the phone on the
counter or floor (but not TOO hard – it’s easy to ‘get into the moment’
and get into the role of this kind of thing – but you don’t wanna be
buying a new phone as a result. That is NOT too funny.)

Then you can either:
a) long silence. Then do a man’s heavy breathing into the phone. Then hang up.
b) Just let the phone lay around until THEY hang up.

Then be prepared to handle the cops.

Remember: Denial is everything. You don’t know what they are talking
about; it must be somebody playing a prank. Deny, deny, deny. Give a
soft laugh. Encourage them ‘in’. If they’ve found ‘evidence’ (e.g. a
phone record) – it must be a wrong number.

Liar liar pants on fire, he’s the one who runs as a free man.

Have fun with them. I do. Nothing better on a cloudy rainy day . . .
when ‘they’ make the mistake of calling me – and I decide to have some
evil fun. (evil grin!)